Japan nervous about sending troops

The dispatch of Japanese troops to help the reconstruction effort in Iraq is likely to be postponed until next year amid security concerns following the deaths of Italian troops in Wednesday's suicide bombing in the south of the country.

"We would send the troops if circumstances permit, but there is no such situation," a government spokesman, Yasuo Fukuda, said in Tokyo. "There has been no change in our intention to join work to provide humanitarian assistance as soon as possible."

The Japanese government had said it would only send troops once the situation was stable.

But the Italian cabinet confirmed its troops will remain in Iraq and dispatched 50 carabinieri to support the depleted force in Nasiriya, in the British sector of Iraq, where 18 Italians were killed.

The British Foreign Office said yesterday that they had not been notified that any of the other 29 countries in Iraq intended to pull out. "It remains the case that all 30 countries will remain on the ground," a spokesman said.

But the Italian deaths have added to jitters among those countries that have been debating whether or not to join the US and Britain in Iraq.

The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, is especially keen to get Pakistani troops, because they can deploy in large numbers, are experienced in peacekeeping and are Muslim. The Pakistan president, Pervez Musharraf, is believed to want to help the US but Pakistan public opinion is largely opposed.

Mr Rumsfeld will be in Japan today and the prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, had been hoping to tell him that Japanese forces would be in Iraq by the end of the year.

Hours before the bombing took place, Mr Fukuda said Japan would proceed with plans to send an advance force of about 150 troops to southern Iraq by the end of the year, with an additional 550 to join them early next year.

Many of the countries with troops in Iraq have only token forces. In the British sector of southern Iraq, Britain has 11,000 troops. The Ministry of Defence said the rest of the sector is made up of 543 Danish, 95 Lithuanians, 129 Norwegians, 271 Czechs, 272 Italians, 514 Romanians, 1,062 from Holland, and 55 New Zealanders. One hundred and twenty Portuguese are scheduled to deploy in the sector next month.

In the Polish sector, which includes the Shia towns south of Baghdad, Poland has 2,400 out of 9,500 troops there. The others are from Bulgaria, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Nicaragua, Mongolia, Philippines, Romania and Slovakia.